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Asia boasts some well-known manufacturing centers, built over the past couple of decades in both centers of manufacturing know-how in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, and low labour cost centers such as Penang in Malaysia and Thailand. Yet as labour costs increase in Asia, even Asian manufacturers, including those from the Japanese and South Korean auto industry are beginning to build plant outside Asia, even in high wage countries such as the UK and Europe, tempted by tax advantages, government incentives, hi-tech employee availability, and distribution efficiencies. Even more recently, manufacturers are taking advantage of manufacturer-friendly policies of the third wave of Asian growth - in China and some Indo-Chinese countries. Asia remains a very significant manufacturing region, despite a general neglect of R&D, which is now being addressed, slowly yet surely, as the realities of the global economy sink in. Manufacturing management in Asia is at the cross-roads, as Asian manufacturing moves from an industry dependent on low local production costs to research and development. Twenty recent research articles are reviewed and they are also available for download this week only. The selected articles this week feature an informative general article on "lean production" and how it relates to competitive advantage, articles from Taiwan China and Japan, a fascinating case study on Honda's industrial robots, and two articles on strategy and manufacturing.
Lean production and sustainable competitive advantage Today, "lean" may no longer be fashionable but its core principles (flow, value, pull, minimizing waste etc.) have become the paradigm for many manufacturing (and service) operations. Given this pre-eminence, the paper seeks to establish what impact it has had on the overall competitive positions of adopter firms. Combining normative and critical theory (from lean production and resource-based view of the firm literature) with empirical material drawn from three case studies, the paper argues that lean production can underpin competitive advantage if the firm is able to appropriate the productivity savings it creates. Similarly, the ambiguity of lean production in practice means that the implementation process can create strategic resources to underpin sustainable competitive advantage. Problematically, however, the paper also suggests that being "lean" can curtail the firm's ability to achieve long-term flexibility. It concludes with suggestions for further work.
Keywords: Lean production, Competitive advantage, Case studies
Organisation design in operations management The organisational design of production systems is thought to be one of the key determinants of their performance. Therefore, in order to enable them to contribute effectively to the successful creation of products and services, OM practitioners need up-to-date, comprehensive and sufficiently detailed organisation design theory. However, 27 case studies aimed at identifying and explaining design performance relationships produced results that could not be explained using organisation theory (OT), while operations management (OM) theory did not provide much help either. OM, because the discipline lacks good organisation design theory. OT, because of some severe limitations, which are mostly due to the paradigmatic directions this discipline has taken. Consequently, OM has to take up the gauntlet itself. An agenda for OM-driven organisation research is proposed, which builds on the strengths of OT, takes away its major weaknesses, and is believed to contribute to the development of actionable organisation design theory.
Keywords: Organizational design, Operations management, Theory, Paradigms, Methodology
An empirical comparison of service matrices This research is the first study to evaluate and compare alternative service positioning matrices using rigorous statistical analysis and a common data set based on a variety of service processes. The matrices are evaluated based on five guidelines: clarity of construct definitions, conceptual independence of the two axes of each matrix, clarity in specifying the direction of causation from one axis to the other, axis unidimensionality, and correlation between the two axes of each matrix. These five guidelines provide a more rigorous approach to evaluating current and future positioning matrices, and contribute to the literature by defining more specifically than past research what constitutes a good positioning matrix. The difference between a classification scheme and a positioning matrix are also explained. The results indicate that while there is a statistically significant level of association (correlation) between the axes (Guideline 5) of each of the service matrices studied, meeting the requirements of the other four guidelines is a challenge for some service matrices.
Keywords: Systems design, Service operations, Statistics, Empirical study
An object-oriented specification of a flexible manufacturing cell The flexibility of an automated manufacturing system (AMS) is largely determined by the architecture of its supervisory software. The AMS supervisory software should be compatible enough to allow re-configuration, maintenance, and upgrading to be done at a reasonable cost, so as to prolong the life span of the AMS, and to maintain its value and success. In this connection, the application of software engineering methodologies is to introduce better management of AMS software development, with a view to providing some structure and formality to express, analyse, and produce them. This paper presents an object-oriented methodology to address the task of AMS supervisory software development. The effectiveness of the methodology is examined in an extensive case study of the development of the supervisory software for a flexible manufacturing cell (FMC) that contains a robot and an AGV.
Keywords: Methodology, Specifications, Systems analysis, Systems design, Flexible manufacturing
systems
The manufacturing manager's role in NPD in Taiwanese electronics The Taiwanese Government developed a series of six-year plans promoting its industrial strategy. Part of the emphasis of the latest plan was to increase product sophistication in ten selected industries, of which the electronics industry is a leading example. The stimulus for this effort was the then rising value of the yen and rising wage levels, making Taiwan a less cost competitive producer than some of its neighbouring countries. Since the fieldwork was completed, Taiwan's economy has been affected by the Asian economic crisis. In a sense this has given Taiwanese industry a breathing space in which it can learn how to overcome the problems shown in this paper. The paper shows that the Government's strategy was partly frustrated in six plants in the electronics industry by limitations within senior manufacturing management. These were deficiencies in the technologies supporting production of new products, limited skills in the pre-production phase, and weaknesses in the relationships with managers in other functions. The need to restore quickly the levels of manufacturing yield and productivity following new product introductions was recognised as important. However, the ability to achieve these goals was constrained by weak systems.
Keywords: New product development, Manufacturing, Taiwan, Electronics industry
A methodology for achieving agility in manufacturing organisations As we approach the twenty-first century, manufacturing success and survival are becoming more and more difficult to ensure. This fact is rooted in the emergence of a new business era that embraces "change" as one of its major characteristics. The emphasis is now on adaptability to changes in the business environment and on addressing market and customer needs proactively. The emerging paradigm is agile manufacturing. Understanding and responding to changes, and taking advantage of changes through strategic utilisation of managerial and manufacturing methods and tools, are some of the pivotal concepts of agile manufacturing. This paper discusses these concepts and presents a methodology to assist manufacturing companies to achieve agility. Industrial questionnaire surveys and case studies are carried out to support and validate the methodology. Results and conclusions derived from the surveys and case studies in support of the methodology are reported.
Keywords: Methodology, Agile production, Manufacturing, Organizational change
An analysis of sources of competitiveness and performance of Chinese manufacturers An exploratory model of competence and performance is presented and tested in the study. Competence in marketing, product innovation, manufacturing, and human resource development across a list of 42 items have been analyzed. Marketing competence was ranked high by Chinese managers. Elements contributed to manufacturing competence regarding process reengineering have not been emphasized as much by Chinese managers. Human resource competence, on the other hand, has been found to be significantly correlated with performance. The results clearly show a trend moving from the state-planned economy to the market economy.
Keywords: Competences, Performance, Empirical study, China
Assessing some distinctive dimensions of performance feedback information in high performing plants A primary function of the Performance Measurement System is to provide employees with information on their past performance, allowing them to assess the outcomes of their actions, and therefore if they are meeting or not the objectives they are given. This work aims at contributing to the understanding of how the effectiveness of performance feedback information can be improved by defining a set of distinct performance feedback dimensions based on a PMS literature review, and by validating it empirically on an international sample of 164 manufacturing organisations. The proposed dimensions are: relevance as performance feedback orientation to the achievement of objectives; dynamic adjustment of performance feedback; relevance as usefulness of cost performance feedback; relevance as usefulness of non-cost performance feedback; timeliness of shop-floor performance feedback; personal performance feedback; and feedback on the overall process performances. The analysis shows that these dimensions are distinct, thus allowing to deal with them separately both in PMS design and audit. As far as the effectiveness of the performance feedback is concerned, it emerges that for several dimensions higher scores are associated to higher operating performances (cost, time and quality), but in one case this only holds for managers and in another one only for supervisors.
Keywords: Performance measurement, Feedback, Information, Audit, Empirical study
Management practices for environmental innovation and performance This paper explores whether there are discernible differences in the environmental innovation and performance of US chemical firms that can be explained by differences in the management practices and characteristics of the firms. Using data from a national survey, firm visits, and phone interviews, this research assesses the pervasiveness of the adoption of environmental management practices. It also assesses whether the adoption of these practices is related to leadership in environmental innovation and performance. This paper shows high levels of adoption of several practices for improving environmental innovation and performance. Firms are using practices such as total quality management, certification of suppliers, R&D, and the involvement of employees in innovation and training to integrate environmental management with their production systems. In addition, firms with the highest adoption levels of environmental practices have substituted cleaner materials and changed their production processes for cleaner production, and they are leaders in reducing their generation of chemical waste.
Keywords: Environmental management systems, Innovation, Performance, Chemical industry
Manufacturing operations and strategic flexibility: survey and cases The ability of manufacturing companies to adapt to their changing environment is frequently a key to long-term success. As a consequence the strategic flexibility of manufacturing operations has become an increasingly important issue for organisations. There have been much theoretical work and some case studies in this domain. This paper reports part of a major study in the area. A key stage in this work has been an empirical study of UK manufacturing to investigate a broad range of issues surrounding manufacturing operations and strategic flexibility. In part this has been carried out through a questionnaire survey. This paper summarises some of the principal findings. These include respondents' descriptions of their business strategies, the part played by manufacturing, the interfaces with customers, and the role of the information system and its contribution to manufacturing. This is complemented by a summary of 32 interviews/case histories which allow these issues to be explored further and which provide the input to the subsequent stages of the overall project.
Keywords: Manufacturing strategy, Flexibility, Surveys, Case studies
Robotization in the Japanese automotive industry Describes the robotization of the Japanese automotive industry. The automotive industry is still the major segment of the industrial robot market in Japan. At the moment, however, annual shipments of industrial robots to the industry are at only 60 per cent of the peak in 1991. This reflects the struggling Japanese economy and low capital investment in domestic car production. Robot applications in car production processes seem to have reached saturation. No new big applications can be expected. Prompt recovery is unlikely.
Keywords: Robots, Automotive, Japan
UK industrial robot installations slip back The annual statistical report of investment in robot automation in UK manufacturing industry during 1998 shows some slippage since the record level of 1997, though the total of installations during the year was still higher than in earlier years. The decline was mainly attributable to a sharp fall in installations by the automotive industry, which is the largest purchaser of industrial robots. A healthy sign, though, is the increasing number of installations by other industries, notably rubber and plastics. International comparisons, though, serve to underline the tough remarks by Eric Drewery at the press launch of the report.
Keywords: Robots, Statistics, United Kingdom
Robot applications in the Japanese food industry Describes general considerations for the design of robots for use in the food industry and gives application examples for food handling and bag packing. Also discusses gripper designs.
Keywords: Robots, Food industry, Motoman
The Honda humanoid robot: development and future perspective Honda revealed a humanoid robot with two legs and two arms in December of 1996. The robot walks not only forward and backward but also diagonally either to the right or left and turns in any direction as well. The robot can also steadily walk up and down a staircase without missing a step and push a cart with coordinated movement of its legs and arms. This robot with its innovative posture stability control can keep its balance against such unexpected disturbances as irregularities and unevenness on the floor surface. The paper introduces an outline of the structure and joints of the robot along with the development history. The basic principle of the robot's posture recovery control is also briefly explained. Keywords: Robot, Service, Walking, Honda
As always we have only skimmed the surface of relevant articles this week and only those that are particularly relevant for Asia-Pacific managers. Many other articles are available as well including those focusing on other countries and international perspectives.
Industrial Management Data Systems Feb 2000 |
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